For almost two decades, social media has changed the world and revolutionized how information is stored, published, searched and consumed. The ripple effect has spread so wide that it impacts not just businesses and industries but crosses over into politics, medicine, media and breaches geographical locations, cultural boundaries and ultimately, affects people’s day to day lives.
What makes social media of particular interest to journalism is how it has become influential as a communication and news-breaking tool.
News consumption today is not the same as pre-internet news when people tune in to events happening around the world through 24-hour television news channels. More recently, a growing number of readers, viewers and listeners are going online for their news. Television, newspapers and radio are still here but there is a growing competition from interactive online media mostly using their mobile phones.
News consumers do a lot of fact checking. For instance, during one of the consortium’s meeting with the PM in Bamenda(coffin Revolution), Ashu Nyenty reported on the 3pm news on CRTV how the meeting went on smoothly contrary to fact that the meeting ended prematurely when the common law lawyers left the hall.Momohnews immediately wrote to Mr. Nyenty questioning his facts and source of his information. Citizen journalists act primarily as watchdog and corrective for the mainstream .No wander Moki Edwin Kindzeka (journalist with CRTV) described the social media as “keyboard intercontinental ballistic missiles bombarding”
In the old days, a reporter was given a lead or went out to find a story. Today, many stories are received third hand (sometimes even fourth ) through Facebook posts or Tweets so that by the time a story is assigned to the reporter, the story in some form or another is already out there in the social media universe. The reporter now has to take that into consideration and find some angle to the story that is not yet being talked about.
This is radically changing the industry’s concept of what a scoop or breaking news is. Journalists in mainstream media in Cameroon are forced to accelerate the traditional journalistic process because people now want real time information. People want the information as soon as the journalist or the media outlet receives it. So to sit on a story until it is complete is to risk being out-scooped by competitors or even worse to be dubbed slow by the public.
It is now a necessity to give the audience bits of information at a time, as soon as the information is available. No media outlet can afford to wait. Why? Traditionally, media outlets compete to out-scoop each other but today if they hold on to a story too long, they run the risk of
being out-scooped by amateurs such as bloggers, citizen journalists and twitt
The birth of social media editors in the newsroom raises questions about the future role of editors: will they soon be doing less journalism and more fact-checking? .For example,Adele Mballa Atangana, a senior journalist with CRTV announces the government of President Emmanuel Macron of France before it was formed, quoting the social media as her source. Will they just be relegated to copy tasting and spotting trends from social networks like Twitter, Facebook and the like?
MOMOH DERO (Digital Agency and Multimedia Journalism, ASMAC)
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